There is a this colleague of mine who sits right in front of me. Though we are a part of same team, we work on different modules so we don't get to talk much. Moreover, she joined the company from the campus along with 5-6 guys and gals. So they were like a gang and would go together for lunch , coffee etc. One of the gang members also belonged to my team and he used to sit next to her. But over a period of time the gang got dismantled as the members started getting onsite opportunity one by one. Things started changing after the guy who was in my team also left for the USA.
She started talking more with me or atleast I started feeling so :) .
She is equally friendly with eveyone in the team. I also started talking more as it was boring sitting quiet throught the day , particulary when you don't have much work. I used to ask how she spent her week ends or about her wedding preparation ( yes , she is getting married :( ) or about her exam preparation or sometimes would crack some silly jokes. She also used to respond and continue the conversation.
Inspite of all these , I always knew to take this lightly and not to read too much into it. Infact , I kept telling myself that she is just a collegue and can not be a friend, though I always wanted to have her as a good friend of mine.
Last month I was burdened with 4 persons work and tight deadline. I used to stay back for a long time in the office. I was amazed with the kind of help she provided to me during the last one month. Though she was not involved in the module I was working on , she helped me finish my task. I remember , it was the D-day, I was almost done with the work. But suddenly an issue croped up and things started getting haywire. I got tensed as we did not have enough time to investigate. I was panicking. It was this time that she came forward. She said to me "Tum paani pe ke aao. Hum dekhte he kya problem he. " ( You go and get fresh. I will try to look in to the probme meanwhile) . After that I just watched her trying to figure out the problem. And man !! she had the solution in few minutes !!! No wonder she belongs to IIT. ( Well, She had to stay back for this and I had to drop her at home on my bike but I am not compalining for that :) )
On one hand I sincerely felt thankful to her. On the oher hand, it aslo hurt my ego as being a computer science student , i had to learn coding from a metllurgy student :( but at the end of it , I took it positively as I was correcting my mistakes. And this feeling of "hurt" did not last long as I also helped her solve couple of problems in her task.
So life has been going good for quite some time but as they say all good things come to an end, little did I know , these happy days will also come to an end.
It was just another day in the office. It was 4 o'clock in the evening and somone started distributing home made sweets ( "Gajar ka Halwa" ) in the office. As I was eating the sweets , I said to her "Tum bhi banya karo gajar ka halwa ( "hamre liye" was unspoken but was heard clearly) " [ Why don't u also make "gajar ka halwa" (for me ) ? ] . And pat came the reply "Tum bhi banya karo " ( why don't u also make ?) . But the tone with which she replied , I think she got offended. She probably strongly belives that women are equivalent to men and if men need not know how to make "halwa" , why should women know about it?
I was thinking of saying "sorry" to her. I looked at her and then thought "should I say or not ?" . This happended 2-3 times and that is because of my ego problem. It is very difficult for me to say "sorry" unless I have made a terrible mistake.
It was probably third time I looked at her when she was dialing her phone. She looked back and said "Chutti le lo. Jab bhi ham phone uthate he hamari taraf dekhte ho aur guilty feel karate ho" ( Why don't u go on leaves ? Whenever I pick up the phone , you look at me and make me feel guilty. ) ( She talks a lot on the phone. So she thought I was thinking "only I am working and she is enjoying" ) And man !! that was a big shock !! All I could say to her was "I will not do that again" and that too in a very low voice.
I went out in the balcony and just thought over it. I did not know how do I react to it. The only thing I knew was it felt very bad. And I decided not to talk to her again , leave alone looking at her. She had left for the day by the time I came back to my seat.
Next day, she came to office and said "Good Morning" with a big smile. Though it felt good , I ignored it. Then she asked "r u busy ?". Again, I did not reply. A message was sent across.
Throught the day we did not look at each other.
She will be in the office for two more weeks and then will go on long leaves for her marraige. On her return, she will most probably join some other project as she has spent quite a long time in this project. So it seems our relationship has ended. And I feel vey bad about it particularly beacuse it has ended on a bad note.
Can I do something to bring back those happy days ? I miss them badly :((
